In New York, medical clearances are performed in-house and referrals to external providers will be made only where specialized services are needed. For an appointment, please contact the MSD reception at +1-212-963-7080, or send an email to msdreception@un.org

For other locations, contact your Medical Service or Human Resources office directly for the process for obtaining medical clearances.

Types of medical clearances

Pre-employment medicals
Done before starting employment with the UN and each time you are appointed to a new post. Depending on your contract type and the work you are going to do, a pre-employment medical can range from a few questions to a comprehensive health examination with blood tests, x-rays and follow up.

Travel clearances
With the introduction of UMOJA, all travel will require a medical clearance. In most cases this can be done automatically, but sometimes we will ask you to answer some questions beforehand. To make sure you travel in the safest way possible, you may be given health advice, vaccinations or treatments for conditions common in the location you are travelling to.

Return to work

Anyone who has had a significant medical illness or injury, or who has been medically evacuated, should receive a clearance to return to work. The return to work clearance makes clear when you can start work, where you can work, and what tasks you can do. In many cases, short term restrictions can be used to help manage the return safely.

In addition to the above types of clearances, staff members may be required at any time to undergo medical evaluation when requested by the Medical Director. This is done either to protect the health and safety of staff members, to follow up chronic medical conditions, or to assess how new circumstances since a prior clearance might be affecting a staff member's capability to fulfill job functions.

Sick Leave

Sick leave

For the first 20 days of absence in a leave cycle (April-March) you should submit a medical certificate in Umoja with your sick leave request. Please ensure that any confidential information is not able to be seen (such as a diagnosis), but do make sure that you keep the original.

If the period of absence takes your total for the year past 20 days, then you will not be able to submit your certificate in Umoja. You must request sick leave in Umoja but send your medical cetrtificate to MSD at sickleave@un.org. Any submission to MSD remains strictly confidential and should include medical information such as the diagnosis. Do NOT send any original copies of documents to MSD.

Your certificate must be submitted within 28 calendar days of the first day of your absence, otherwise it may be rejected as late. If this occurs, follow the advice in the email that will be sent to you from our electronic medical record system, earthmed@un.org (note this is a do not reply email address). If your sick leave request is only partially approved or rejected for some other reason then you will also receive an email from earthmed@un.org providing further instructions.

After an extended period of illness or for a serious injury it is beneficial if you get the clearance to come back to work or have a program that gradually re-starts your work. Either you or your health practitioner can initate this by simply approaching the Medical Services Division and asking to speak to one of our staff.

For the Staff Member: A return to work program will help you get better faster and will help get your life back to normal. The most effective return to work program will be one developed by yourself in collaboration with MSD and your supervisor. MSD will only provide information that relates to what you can or cannot do - no confidential information on the medical condition itself will be provided. You may choose to reveal more to your supervisor if you feel it will help manage your work better, but you are under no obligation to do so. The organisation will ensure that reasonable adjustments are made to accomodate your circumstances, but if you have any questions or concerns about how this will be implemented we encourage you to speak with the MSD clinical staff as soon as possible.

For the Supervisor: Return to work programs are good for the staff member, and by brinigng valuable staff members back to work earlier, are good for the organisation as well. As a supervisor, you are obliged to actively participate in managing return to work programs and to manage your staff according to the limitations advised by MSD. In general, we we encourage you and the staff member to work together to determine what can and cannot be done. We expect that supervisors will be guided by the staff member as they know their own limitations best, however, we must also acknowledge that during recovery there will be good days as well as bad days. If you feel there is a task the staff member should be able to do but they do not, then we expect this to be explored with the staff member first, then raised with MSD. Flexibility and trust are key.